1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to print job management system and method, and in particular, it relates to method implemented in print shops for customized print job duplication.
2. Description of Related Art
Print-on-demand (POD) document reproduction systems and programs have been developed and widely used to manage workflows and print jobs in an environment where a large number of print jobs are processed with multiple printers. Examples of such an environment are professional print shops and print/copy department at large organizations, where a variety of print requests, such as large-volume duplication and large document printing, needs to be processed and completed by utilizing multiple printers within a short turn-around time. These environments are collectively referred to as “print shops” in this application.
In a print shop management process, each printing job typically specifies a source file that electrically contains a document to be printed, and the required printing parameters such as the size, color and the type of the paper on which the document should be printed, the printing resolution, duplex or single-side printing, and certain finishing conditions, such as book, staple, collate printing, etc., depending on a print job requester's needs. In order to process a large volume of print jobs that each differs in terms of these job parameters, a print shop utilizes multiple commercial grade printers, including black & white and color printers, each with often different limitations on available printer settings, such as the paper size, the paper type, resolution settings, etc. In addition, the print shop employs various finishing devices, such as collators, staplers, hole punchers, folding machines, binding machines, etc.
A print shop (or print job) management process is typically implemented by software or firmware programs executed by digital data processing apparatus such as a control computer or server connected to the printers in a print shop. The print shop management system submits each print job to one or more printers and finishing devices to produce the print job. The job submission may be done automatically by the print shop management system, semi-automatically with certain amount of operator intervention, or manually where decisions of how to submit the print job to appropriate printers or finishing devices are made by an operator.
The print shop management process and system organizes and manages print jobs using database entries, typically referred to as “job tickets”. A job ticket specifies values of various print job parameters, and associates itself to the source file(s) to be printed. In one particular example, a job ticket may include a job ticket number, ticket name as well as the values of the following groups of various other job parameters: job information settings, basic settings (e.g., number of copies, orientation of paper, collate, offset printing, original paper size, output paper size, paper type, paper source, etc.), layout settings, cover sheet, finishing settings, inter-sheet settings, tab-paper settings, image quality settings, and customer information. A job ticket is associated with a source file (i.e. the document to be printed), and they collectively constitute a print job within the print shop management system.
Oftentimes a print job needs to be duplicated. In some print shop management programs a functionality for print job duplication is provided by having a print job copied in its entirety and assigned a new name. However, many times the duplicated print job needs to be done with modified settings. In these situations a user typically needs to open the new print job, move through the job's sub-categories, and modify individual settings one at a time. For simple jobs, this may not be a very time-consuming process and the simple duplication function may be quite useful. In other cases, however, simple duplication of a print job would not be a time-saving option for the user if the print job is more complicated. Nonetheless, any particular print job may have a certain amount of information that would be useful if it could be transferred to a new job order, because the user can save valuable time of re-entering duplicative data and can process the new print job much quicker.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a method to copy only the duplicative portion of a print job order while allowing the user to modify other portions of the new job order with new or changed parameters.